Not Spending Money Can Improve Fast Food

In “Diet for a New America,” author John Robbins points out that fast-food hamburger chains are the principal offenders in the rape of the rain forests. A football field of atmosphere-nourishing trees are razed daily, primarily to provide pasture land for beef (despite clown-faced Ronald McDonald’s reassurance that hamburgers grow in hamburger patches).

Robbins, who points out that any ecological turnabout must begin on our own plates, suggests that every American who forgoes one quarter-pounder per week effectively saves an acre of rain forest per year.

JOHN OETTINGER

Hollywood